Implications of economic crisis for the artistic process

As they scramble to stay afloat or survive, many affected institutions in Europe are also desperately cultivating private donors anywhere and everywhere they can be found. However, with little prior experience with, or little understanding of, that kind of heavy fund-raising, they find it difficult.

They often turn to the American institutions for advice. With many of them they’ve cultivated longstanding affiliations that they are trying to cash on in these difficult times.

The Brooklyn Academy of Music executive producer Joseph V. Melillo, reveals: “I can definitely tell you that across the board, they’re talking about their governments saying that they’re going to have to move toward an American model. But there is hardly any tradition of such individual philanthropy in most of these cultures, and so they lack both tax incentives and the motivation to give.”

As a result, a few European arts institutions have started to look for financial backing in the US, courting companies or wealthy Americans sharing emotional bonds with an ancestral homeland. However, that means, as Mr. Stadler well acknowledged, that ‘we’re competing with top American institutions, equally hit hard.”

Artists’ worry is that money will largely flow to more established entities, which are more conservative, instead of more experimental companies, which have been incubators of new, exciting talents. That, they state, has major implications for the artistic process.

The established entities are needed to refresh their portfolio by collaborating with younger, upcoming artists, and it’s the small as well as a few middle-sized companies, which tend to bring innovation and diversity. You have made a different dynamic work now. But a lot of it will fade out because it cannot sustain itself.”

Even once the crisis subsides, if and when, many fear that the lingering impact of the cutbacks could affect each stage of the artistic process permanently, from the level of creation to consumption.